Tag Archives: creativity

Publishing, The New Space of Publishing

Why do the Working Class find it hard to break into the publishing industry?  

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In a recent interview, author Kit De Waal made headlines when she asked the question “Where Have All the Working Class Writers gone?  “What I don’t see in bookstores are stories that speak about my life, my experiences and see something about someone who came from a working class background”[i]. 

Hadrian Garrard, director of the arts organisation Create, has also warned “that the UK is in danger of returning to a pre-1950’s era when the arts were considered to be largely the preserve of the rich”[ii]. Movements that gave the working class a voice, such as the “Angry Young Men” [iii]  in the 1950s, including writers such as Kingsley Amis, Colin Wilson and John Osborne, are hard to come to by today. While the “anger and disillusionment with conformity and the conservative values” from that period in time remain to this day, systematic problems have  led to a culture that does not give voice to the disillusioned and disadvantaged. A recent survey by the University of Goldsmiths and Create found that “three-quarters of creative industry workers came from a middle class background.” 

In the ’70s, Government benefits gave many working class writers the opportunity to kick-start their career. Author Alan Warner has said that his time on the dole “absolutely formed me as a person. It gave me a haphazard literary education and it made me appreciate the incredible value of free time.” [iv]  Similarly, writer Geoff Dyer described his time on the benefits system in the 1980s, as “idyllic”. Providing support for writers, musicians and other artists may have been an unintentional side effect of the benefits system, however there was not the feeling of ‘cheating the system’ that there is today. A culture of ‘Scrounger stigma’, brought on by shows like Benefit Street, has put “poor people off applying for essential benefits”. [v]  There seems to be a resentment of the poor, and even more so for the unemployed. For a work driven culture with a need for instant results, long form writing is not seen as a resourceful field. Monetary cuts, and changing societal views has led to the total disbandment of the idea you can be on benefits and develop towards becoming a writer.

Like the working world, the current education system has also become increasingly results and measurement driven. It favours grade results in pursuit of higher league table placements, summed up by the OCR board as “Too many exams and not enough education” [vi]. Creativity is said to become one of the most important “skills for workers by 2020” [vii] , with the “creative industries being the fastest growing sector within the UK” [viii] yet schools are basing their education system around  Ebacc, a government programme that measures school performances only on results of the traditional and more ‘academic’ subjects. This has been linked to a “28% drop in the number of children choosing creative subjects”.[ix]

We are not encouraging enough children to go into the creative world at a young age, “60% of jobs are hidden behind connections” [x] and the little work experience that people get at a school age heavily focuses on traditional 9-5 jobs. Freedom of career choice is being severely limited for those unaware of the opportunities around them. Perhaps there is the feeling that the middle class will cover the gap the working class cannot get into, but by losing that voice, publishers are losing potential stories, markets, and interest.

There are many problems facing writers from lower class backgrounds, a big one being the balance between pursuing creative endeavours, while having to maintain the necessity of a working life. For Kit De Waal, it was only when “she was 45 and had adopted her second child” that the opportunity to take “writing seriously”[xi] became available. Financial woes have restricted the amount of ‘free-time’ people have, with “12.7 % of Britain working 50 plus hours a week”[xii]  in order to survive in the current climate of housing crisis, and rising rent. For the middle and upper class, this is less of an issue. Having the financial support of parents, or a partner, provides a base of a stability to write that the working class cannot afford. The problem was big enough for Kit De Waal to take personal action, by setting up her own  scholarship for an MA Writing degree, as she was “keen to back someone who would not ordinarily think about taking a creative writing course” but, outside of sparse opportunities like this, there is a clear lack of options for working class people wanting to become published writers.

De Waal has also recently led the production of an anthology of working class writers. “Too often, working class writers find that the hurdles they have to leap are higher and harder to cross than for writers from more affluent backgrounds. ‘Common People’ will see writers who have made that leap reach back to give a helping hand to those coming up behind.” [xiii] What this and the scholarship provide are an immediate direct solution, but the broader issues remain embedded societally.

It’s hard to get noticed as a writer, and even harder to get signed by a publisher, so it would seem that self-publishing could be a solution for the working class writers who don’t have the connections within the industry. Unfortunately, this again goes back to the issue of ‘free-time’. While it may seem easier, self-publishing requires the knowledge of editing, EBook formatting, print design, printing and all the other processes that publishers typically handle. In the case of self-publishing, these would either have to be self-taught, or out-sourced for a fee. Plus with “786,935 titles being issued to self-publishing in 2016” [xiv] alone, writers face an “uphill battle to gain the credibility for work” [xv] within an incredibly large market.

Working class writers need space to breath, to make mistakes, to take the kind of chances that the middle and upper classes can. As stated earlier, the arts continue to grow in importance for the British economy, writing is potentially a viable career, and, while from the economic point of view of those at the top it makes no immediate difference whether a writer is working class or not, choosing not to help the disenfranchised will have consequences in the long run. People want stories they can relate to, they will want working class stories, and while writers from the outside could do this, that genuine perspective will be lost. Kit De Waal is doing a great thing by providing a helping hand to working class writers, but it’s time for the government, and the rest of the publishing industry to follow suite. By choosing not to nurture the creativity of the young and the poor, we are setting up a narrow field within the arts.

 

[i]  “Where Are All the Working Class Writers? – BBC Radio 4.” n.d. BBC. . http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09fzmjt.

[ii] Ellis-Petersen, Hannah. 2015. “Middle Class People Dominate Arts, Survey Finds.” The Guardian. November 23, 2015. http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/nov/23/middle-class-people-dominate-arts-survey-finds.

[iii] “The 1950s: English Literature’s Angry Decade.” n.d. The British Library. Accessed March 2, 2018. https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/the-1950s-english-literatures-angry-decade.

[iv] Dyer, Geoff, A. L. Kennedy, Kerry Hudson, Alan Warner, Lemn Sissay, and Chris Killen. 2015. “Gissa Job! Writers on the Dole.” The Guardian. August 1, 2015. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/01/writers-recall-time-dole-unemployment-benefits.

[v] Ramesh, Randeep. 2012. “‘Scrounger’ Stigma Puts Poor People off Applying for Essential Benefits.” The Guardian. November 20, 2012. http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/nov/20/scrounger-stigma-poor-people-benefits.

[vi] “[No Title].” n.d. Accessed March 2, 2018. http://www.cambridgeassessment.org.uk/Images/140057-achieve-autumn-11.pdf.

[vii] “Website.” n.d. Accessed March 13, 2018. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-10-skills-you-need-to-thrive-in-the-fourth-industrial-revolution/.

[viii] Kampfner, John. 2017. “Creative Industries Are Key to UK Economy.” The Guardian. January 1, 2017. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/01/creative-industries-key-to-uk-economy.

[ix] “GCSE Results Announced Today See a Continuing Free Fall in Arts Subject Entries.” 2017. Cultural Learning Alliance. August 24, 2017. https://culturallearningalliance.org.uk/gcse-results-announced-today-see-a-continuing-free-fall-in-arts-subject-entries/.

[x] “How to Find Unadvertised Jobs.” 2012. The Guardian. November 23, 2012. http://www.theguardian.com/careers/careers-blog/how-to-find-unadvertised-jobs.

[xi] Foster, Dawn. 2016. “Kit de Waal: ‘Working-Class Stories Need to Be Told’ | Dawn Foster.” The Guardian. February 3, 2016. http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/feb/03/kit-de-waal-working-class-stories-need-to-be-told.

[xii] Cary, Peter. 2017. “A Landmark Report Just Made It Clear How Bad British People Have It.” The Independent. November 15, 2017. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/british-workers-longer-hours-lower-pay-expensive-housing-oecd-developed-nations-uk-comparisons-a8055736.html.

[xiii] (“Common People: An Anthology of Working Class Writers by Kit de Waal (editor) on Unbound” n.d.)

[xiv] “Self-Published ISBNs Hit 786,935 in 2016.” n.d. PublishersWeekly.com. Accessed March 2, 2018. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/manufacturing/article/75139-self-published-isbns-hit-786-935-in-2016.html.

[xv] “The Pros and Cons of Self-Publishing.” n.d. Accessed March 2, 2018. http://bookmarketingtools.com/blog/the-pros-and-cons-of-self-publishing/.

Business Models, Creative Business, Markets and Communities, Past Events

How can creative businesses be both ethical and profitable?

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The relationship between cultural value and economic value lies at the heart of the creative industries and is crucial to the lives and work of every artist and creative practitioner. The value that creative businesses aim to create is not only financial, but also cultural and social and they are often motivated by strong ethics. This has a significant effect on how they function as businesses.

It is however a complex and varied relationship, much contested and, perhaps, often misunderstood. David Throsby attempted a thorough examination of this relationship in Economics and Culture.[1] It is also central to more recent research carried out by NESTA[2]  and the AHRC [3] .  Such enquiries and analyses have begun to develop a more expansive and richer language and set of concepts for thinking and talking about the connection between cultural and economic value. Our discussion panel ‘How Can Creative Businesses be both Ethical and Profitable?’ (University of Greenwich, 3/5/17) sought to contribute to this ongoing discussion, with a particular focus on social value, understanding the latter to constitute an important form of cultural value.

The three contributors to the panel each occupy a particular position with regard to cultural and economic value:

Sheeza Ahmed Shah is the co-founder of The Up Effect, a crowd funding platform for social enterprises. Before they accept a business onto their platform, The Up Effect staff scrutinize its business and social impact plans to determine whether they are mutually supportive and add up to a coherent package. They are looking for businesses with a clear social purpose, which also have a viable and scaleable revenue model. Sheeza is clear that social impact is only achievable and sustainable to the extent that a company can make money and grow.

Seva Phillips manages NESTA’s Arts Impact Fund, which supports cultural organisations in developing their social aims and making sure that the cultural value that they create has social impact. Seva stressed that, to be successful in this endeavour, organisations need to be clear about motivation – why they want to achieve a social impact in the first place, outcomes – what exactly the change is that they want to achieve, and accountability – how they will evaluate whether they have achieved these outcomes.

Florence Magee is Head of Artist Development at SPACE and Programme Manager of the London Creative Network. Her role is to help individual content creators, such as artists, photographers and crafts people, to strengthen the sustainability and increase the capacity of their businesses. The majority of people she works with do not currently make a living from their creative practice alone, but sustain it financially through income from other work. Sustainability and growth in this context mean helping people to maintain their arts practice and to develop its profile, but not necessarily to derive their main income from it.

Our panel thus represented a broad spectrum with regard to the aims, objectives and context of cultural production with a social purpose and it became clear that certain aspects of business and creative production mean different things in different contexts. While Sheeza’s platform helps companies to grow in terms of scaleability and expanding their size and customer reach, for the individual cultural content makers that Florence works with, growth does not so much mean expanding the size of the company (many of her clients are sole traders) as increasing the cultural value of their work – in terms of their profile, the venues in which they exhibit, the publications in which they publish and so on. This increase in cultural value, she points out, is what will increase financial value. Furthermore, while the companies who crowd fund on The Up Effect explicitly define themselves as social enterprises, most of the practitioners who Florence works with would not categorise their practice as having a social purpose, despite the fact that ethics and politics may deeply motivate their work and how they approach it. Their values may be embodied and expressed in their work but they would not generally produce a specific plan for the social impact of their work. Social value is likely to be implicit rather than explicit.

At the same time, Seva pointed out, ethics is becoming something that consumers and audiences want to buy into. Ecological sustainability, fair trade and employment practices and social activism have the potential to translate into financial value and to be advantageous to a company in the marketplace. Large corporations are as aware of this as are social purpose startups. This is why Bank of America Merrill Lynch are investors in NESTA’s Social Impact Fund.

Both Seva and Sheeza stressed that social enterprise is in fact becoming a crowded market and it is vital that part of the social impact that a social purpose company achieves is to tell its story effectively and to make this story a central part of its brand. At the same time, this story needs to genuinely reflect the core mission of the company, not be simply a marketing strategy. This is not easy to get right and is something that large corporations often get wrong in social media campaigns, as Colette Henry recounted in a previous Creative Conversation. There are, in general, some obvious pitfalls inherent in the monetization of social value and care must be taken to get the balance right.

Another issue that arose in discussion was the lack of equitable reward structures to encourage the development, sharing and exploitation of original and innovative ideas. Creativity and innovation are buzzwords in contemporary culture, not only in the creative arts, but in government and across all business sectors. However, it is often the case that, while artists and other innovators generate cultural and social value through new ideas and practices, the financial value is realized by other agencies, which have the resources to scale up and monetise these ideas. Sometimes this may be the result of a fruitful and equitable partnership, but, as ideas are not in themselves protectable intellectual property, this is often not the case.

Some Conclusions and Further Questions

As expected, the wide ranging discussion threw up more questions than it answered. Social impact has clearly become a central focus for discussions about the relationship between cultural and economic value. At its most basic level, this is because evidence of social impact has become something that customers will pay for, making it an easily identifiable and measurable signifier of the correlation between economic and cultural value. This is largely a positive development. Adam Arvidsson has written about the way that businesses may become more and more dependent on ‘productive consumer publics’ for their value in the marketplace, giving such publics the power to ‘set the values that are attributed to consumer brands.’ [4]

However, if ‘economic impact, often defined more narrowly than conventionally understood by economists, has become the principal way for proponents of arts and culture to argue its economic importance,’ [5] so too the application of too narrow a definition of social impact and/or an overemphasis on its monetisation or cost effectiveness (an important consideration with regard to the introduction of the Public Services Social Value Act) would be unhelpful. This would have the effect of straitjacketing, rather than developing and encouraging creative and social practice.

At the same time, the prevalence of discussion around community interest, social purpose and social impact could and should encourage creative practitioners and businesses to think more about how relevant this might be to what they do. Many creative practitioners and companies may not immediately think of themselves in these terms, but, on reflection, might find that they do operate according to strong ethics and are creating social value or have the potential to do so. Building this more explicitly into their strategy could help their business and the local and wider communities of which they are part.

Questions that seem particularly pertinent to explore further, with regard to how creative enterprises might practically develop their cultural, social and financial value, include:

    • Cultural content producers tend to channel creativity and develop original ideas at the level of content, while pursuing traditional business models for their sector, e.g seeking public funding, focusing on increasing the cultural value of their work through existing institutional frameworks. Should they perhaps also be focusing on developing original and creative approaches to their business model itself? If so, what might these be?
    • What more equitable reward structures might be developed to encourage the development, sharing and exploitation of original and innovative ideas? How might artists and other creative practitioners develop forms of expression for early stage ideas and creative practices that give them a status as cultural assets with a definable and tradable value?
    • Crowd funding is an example of how digital technologies can be used to catalyze and motivate users to come together to form a customer base that is simultaneously a community. What other ways might there be to achieve a scalable convergence of market place and community ? For example, a multitude of online hosting platforms exist – for websites, video, audio, designs, online stores etc. – to facilitate marketing and distribution of creative work. To what extent are these helping creatives to create viable businesses? Where are the opportunities for increasing cultural and social impact and profit? How might such approaches perhaps address the two questions above?

[1] Throsby, D, Economics and Culture, C.U.P 2001

[2] Bakhshi, H, Measuring Cultural Value, NESTA 2012

[3] Crossick, G & Kaszynska, P, Understanding The Value of Arts and Culture, AHRC 2016

[4] Arvidsson, A, ephemera: theory & politics in organization, Volume 13(2): 367-391, 2013

[5] Crossick, G & Kaszynska, P, Understanding The Value of Arts and Culture, AHRC 2016

 

Digitising Academic Publishing

How Should We Publish Our Research?

The Creative Conversations Project has been hosting events & panel discussion since 2015 and have decided to publish a series of books based on our findings. Our first publication will be a curated collection of articles expanding upon our research into The New Space of Publishing, which we aim to bring out this summer. One concern for the publication began to take the full attention of the team, how do we disseminate our research to the widest possible audience? To answer this question I composed a mini-project entitled Digitising Academic Publishing, which aims to:

  • Understand the best way Creative Conversations can publish our findings.
  • Contrast traditional and contemporary publishing models to provide a comprehensive understanding of the market.
  • Identify key milestones in the history of academic publishing.
  • Better understand the future of digital academic publishing.

Our publication will take two forms: a physical print (limited print run), which will allow us to explore & understand the particular logistics and aesthetics involved in producing a book as a physical commodity. From this we will gather first hand insight into traditional academic publishing models. The findings will also be published and distributed online allowing us to explore the advent of digital & hybrid publishing models, self-publishing & distribution, as well as digital design & formatting. Publishing online will also present new challenges when trying to reach the widest possible audience.

What Is Academic Publishing?

Academic publishing is the field of publishing which distributes academic findings and research. This can be done in a number of ways (for full description see the appendix at the bottom of the page).

The purpose of academic publishing is attributed to its conception. Now over 350 years old the first academic journals, The Royal Society of London’s Philosophical Transactions and the French published Journal des Sçavans aimed to capitalise and document the scientific revolution that was occurring[1]. The widespread dissemination of knowledge provided the foundation for the industrial revolution and widespread growth, fueling the overall keen interest in science, history and the arts, that preceded it.

Modern academic publishing provides much the same purpose, allowing for the growth and continued development of learned professions. However, publishing increasingly has become a symbol of status for academics. Those with a higher publishing status considered themselves to be more academically viable. This problem has seen a recent spike in journal subscription costs[2].

The Big Five?

Within any capitalist market, the reliance on continued growth and prolonged market sustainability eventually leads to dominant market powers who consist of huge conglomerates. The big five in international academic publishing are Reed Elsevier, Springer Science+Business Media, Wiley-Blackwell, Taylor & Francis, and Sage, which now control over 50% of the academic markets, with some publishers owning up to 70% of specified academic areas as of 2015[3].  In contrast, in 1973, market share of the five largest publishers was only about 20 percent. Open access was proposed as early as 1994[4] as an attempt to prevent this oligopoly, but was not immediately implemented. The ensuing result was that journal prices increased substantially and, since research institutes required access to multiple subscription services, poorer academic institutes were priced out[5].

The creation of market dominance has occurred in similar fashion to the music[6] and commercial publishing markets[7]. The sudden drop of physical consumption of academic journals in favour of digital publications caused the market to restructure and those able to offer subscription services prevail. This, twinned with a boom in research institutes and outputs, saw prices increase six fold since 1990[8]. However, a 2012 article argued that the statistics were inaccurate with regards to the rising costs of publications, due to the changing dynamic of sales within the market[9]. The article provided key areas to consider when identifying if publishing costs are really increasing at such a rate:

  • Purchasing Patterns – The application of subscription services and how these will be affected by fair usage.
  • Price Per Journal – The Increase of one journal adjusted for inflation.
  • Cost Per Article Download – Globally an article cost £0.70 in 2008[10].
  • Growth in Content – In 1990 there were 16,000 academic journals, and 26,000 by 2010[11].
  • Growth in Research – Ever increasing funding for research outputs.
  • Growth in Usage – In 2011 the number of cited references per article in major scientific disciplines had gone up by 1/3 to 1/2 from 1990[12].

Similar to the music and commercial publishing markets, the digitisation of articles has left the commodity worthless, while access to a large collection of articles is of great value. The push will leave article reservoirs to continue to grow in significance as the market overall continues to stutter.

The Future?

Regardless of the current state of the academic publishing market, the recent application of Open Access in the UK has seen a sudden opening up of the market with the introduction of new university presses and legitimately ranked self-publishing platforms. We have seen a resurgence in independent market control and competition.

Things we’ve covered:

  • The different types of academic publishing models.
  • The importance of academic journals to human development.
  • The effects of dominance in the academic publishing market.
  • How information reservoirs will become more significant.

http://blogs.gre.ac.uk/creativeconversations/2017/03/09/introduction-two-new-mini-projects/

 

Appendix – Types of Academic Outputs

Monographs:

A study of a single specialised subject or aspect of it – usually highly detailed on a limited area of a subject or field of enquiry.

Research Papers:

A written record of insight into a particular academic discipline. Research papers follow strict formatting. They rely on the referencing of other papers, books or original source materials.

Academic Journals:

A specific area publication intended for professionals. Usually compromised of multiple writings from several academics, they are published regularly and are regarded as one of the main sources of authority in academia. The academic journal was created to help academics disseminate research to a larger audience in a coherent and competent way. Peer review provides that the development of knowledge remains consistent and competent. Journals are now distributed through a mix of physical and digital subscription services. Journals are normally numbered to allow professionals to easily refer back to.

Magazines:

A magazine is a collection of stories, articles or news on particular academic studies. They are produced periodically to keep their readers updated with breakthroughs and the latest news in their specific fields. Usually available through subscription services.

Did you know that before the 19th century books were referred to as ‘magazines’?

The original origins of magazine referred to storage of a ‘collection’ of goods and materials, hence why people called books magazines.

Books:

An academic book is an extensive publication. Normally a collection of papers by one or more people, or collection of papers & other materials. The scope of a book can range from area introductory texts to advanced understandings, which deconstruct specific academic areas.

References –

[1] C, Costa. The Participatory Web in the Context of Academic Research: Landscapes of Change and Conflicts. (2013).

[2] Mabe, Michael. Ware, M. The STM Report (2015)

[3] Larivière V, Haustein S, Mongeon P. The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era. (2015).

[4] Harnad, S. A Subversive Proposal. (1995).

[5] Habib, A. How Academic Journals Price Out Developing Countries. (2011).

[6] IFPI. Digital Music Report. (2015).

[7] Wischenbart, R. Global Trends in Publishing 2014. (2014).

[8] Bosch, S., Henderson, K., & Klusendorf, H. Periodicals Price Survey 2011: Under pressure, Times are changing. Library Journal. (2011).

[9] Gantz, P. Digital Licenses Replace Print Prices as Accurate Reflection of Real Journal Costs. Volume 11, No. 3, (Summer/Fall 2012).

[10] Research Information Network. E-journals: their use, value and impact final report (2011)

[11] International STM, ALPSP and the Publishers Association. Scientific Technical and Medical (STM). (2010).

[12] Research Information Network. E-journals: their use, value and impact final report (2011)

Digitising Academic Publishing, Local In A Digital World, Markets and Communities, The New Space of Publishing

An Introduction to Two New Mini-Projects.

Local in a Digital Age

What does it mean to be local in a digital age?

This research sets out to examine confluences between the types of communication and exchange networks and constructions of personal & community identity that are enabled & encouraged by digital technology, on the one hand, and physical proximity and location on the other.

Its particular context is the creative industries, taking Greenwich as the overall case study, and, within Greenwich, five more specific case studies, relating to different creative sectors.

Principal Research Questions:

What significance do creative practitioners / businesses / customers / audiences ascribe to their location in Greenwich?

What is the role of face to face interaction (between creative producers and customers/audiences, other practitioners, members of the wider community etc.) in creative arts and events? What significance (personal, social, economic, logistical etc.) do they ascribe to this interaction?

How do creative practitioners / businesses / audiences use digital technology to produce, promote and participate in creative arts and events? What significance (personal, social, economic, logistical etc.) do they ascribe to this technology?

As part of this research we are conducting a short questionnaire. If you are local to the Greenwich Borough and have a couple of spare minutes,  please feel free to tell us your opinion.

Click here: https://goo.gl/forms/jeQkJdAKLJRK3Ac33.

Digitising Academic Publishing

How has the digital revolution changed academic publishing?

This research aims to examine the changing shape of academic publishing; contrasting new and old academic publishing models and identifying how digital publications have affected the way in which the public, scholars and students access information. The crux of the research is to present the best possible way for academics to disseminate their work to the widest audience.

The work aims to understand the effects of Open Access on academics, publishers and academic institutes. It will include, examine and assess business models used by publishing companies, university libraries/ presses and distributors, and identify how these entities have adjusted in the digital market place.

 Principal Research Questions:

How should an academic publish their work? – Identifying if traditional publishing has become synonymous with reputation and how quality can be maintained within new publishing models.  

What is the future of the academic publishing market? – A look at worldwide programmes to create universal dissemination of knowledge. 

Should an academic self-publish? – How self-publishing has become an integral part of the industry and why it should or shouldn’t be considered for academics.

How has the digital market redefined conventional publishing tropes? – With the majority of reading conducted on digital devices, how has the market adjusted to maintain consistence and ease of use?

 

creativity, design, Past Events

Designing Death: Panel Discussion

Designing Death: Challenges and Aesthetics for the 21st Century

Date: Wednesday 15th March 2017
Time: 18:00 – 21:00
Venue:  University of Greenwich, Stockwell Street Building, 10 Stockwell Street, Greenwich SE10 9BD

RSVP here.

Death is personal.
Death is social.
Death is constructed.
Death is meaningful and meaningless.
Death is ritualised but also intuitive.
Death is annihilation and transcendence.
Death is art and science.
Death is human.

Dying is one of the most personal experiences we will have in our lives and yet there are still norms for what bereavement and funerals should look and feel like.

This panel will consider the growing movement which questions whether any models or systems of categorisation still speak to our contemporary understanding of death. Funerals in the UK now have more scope then ever to be a richly personal occasion and design is contributing to this movement. The funeral industry is adapting to the contemporary need for more individualised rituals and people’s desire to use funerals as a creative opportunity to further embody or understand the lives of the dead in an individual way. These shifts challenge what the dead mean to us and how bodies and environments merge to create new associations and experiences of death.

As people begin to identify themselves as non-religious or explore incorporating a plurality of religious identities that combine and augment existing rituals and practices the question of what to do with the dead, both literally and socially, becomes ever more complex. Contemporary design methods are uniquely placed to contribute to the development of new rituals and practices around death and bereavement. As design has been opened up beyond the world of products and has begun to intervene and work within systems under labels such as service designer, experience designer and co-designer, the idea of designing for a purpose that puts emotion and experience at the center of the design is establishing its place for a range of companies and services.

The Design Council’s May 2015 post Reinventing death for the twenty-first century reflects this shift by detailing some of the challenges and ways that design could intervene within end of life care, both in terms of the appendages linked to dying at home but also in terms of new rituals, breaking taboos and the introduction of new technologies where appropriate. Additionally design competitions such as Designboom’s Design for Death, the Future Cemetery Project and OPENIDEO’s Reimaging End of Life have opened up this topic for discussion within the design community.

Panel Speakers:
Ivor Williams

Ivor Williams is a designer who specialises in death and dying, through his work as Senior Design Associate at the Helix Centre and his research and consultancy group Being and Dying. He explores the use of technology-for-good as co-founder of the design company, Humane Engineering. Their first product, Cove, is a music-maker designed to support grieving adolescents.

Website: ivorwilliams.info
@ivorinfo | @beinganddying | @helixcentre

Louise Winter

Louise Winter is a writer and the founder of Poetic Endings – a modern funeral service offering ceremonies of style, substance, relevance and meaning. She’s also the editor of the Good Funeral Guide – the only independent resource that exists to help the public get the funeral they want.

Website: www.poetic-endings.com
@poetic_endings | Poetic Endings Facebook | Poetic Endings Instagram

John Troyer

Dr. John Troyer is the Director of the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath. His interdisciplinary research focuses on contemporary memorialisation practices, concepts of spatial historiography, and the dead body’s relationship with technology. Dr. Troyer is also a theatre director and installation artist with extensive experience in site-specific performance across the United States and Europe. He is a co-founder of the Death Reference Desk website (http://www.deathreferencedesk.org), the Future Cemetery Project (http://www.futurecemetery.org) and a frequent commentator for the BBC.

Website: www.bath.ac.uk/cdas
@DeathRef | @FutureCemetery | @CenDeathSociety

Dr Ros Taylor MBE DL

Ros is Clinical Director at Hospice UK. She combines her role at the charity with her work as a palliative doctor at the Royal Marsden Hospital in Fulham, London, one of the world’s leading specialist cancer treatment hospitals. Ros joined Hospice UK as a director in October 2014. Prior to that she had been a trustee at the charity since 2009 and was also the Director of the Hospice of St Francis in Berkhamsted, a position she held from 1996 until 2015. She has a special interest in medical education, medical humanities, ‘whole person care’ and has lectured widely, both nationally and internationally. Ros is also a Deputy Lieutenant in the County of Hertfordshire and was awarded an MBE for Services to Hospice Care in 2014.

Website: https://www.hospiceuk.org/
@hospicedoctor

Chair
Stacey Pitsillides

Stacey Pitsillides is a Lecturer in Design at the Creative Professions and Digital Arts Department, University of Greenwich. Her research considers how technology and design shift our understanding of death and bereavement. As part of this research she has curated events for public engagement that question legacy and aesthetics. These include Love After Death for Nesta’s FutureFest (https://www.loveafterdeath.co.uk/) and Material Legacies for the Stephen Lawrence Gallery (http://www.greenwichunigalleries.co.uk/material-legacies/). In addition to this she is on the standing committee for the Death Online Research Symposium and has been the co-facilitator of three unconference events discussing issues of death and digitality.

Website: http://www.digitaldeath.eu/
@RestInPixels | Digital Death and Beyond Blog

The Material Legacies exhibition will be running until 25th March 2017 at the Stephen Lawrence Gallery Greenwich.

Cinematography, Film, Past Events

A Dialogue with Billy Williams OBE, Vanessa Whyte 22nd Feb

Cinematography: A dialogue with Billy Williams OBE, BSC
& Vanessa Whyte

22nd Feb 2017

Billy Williams OBE, BSC shooting The Manhattan Project

Billy Williams OBE, BSC is an award winning cinematographer with a distinguished career in film. At just 14 years of age he started out as an apprentice to his father, working on training films for the Ministry of Defence. From there he went on to become an assistant cameraman with British Transport Films, making documentaries and developing his skills until he was given the opportunity to become a cameraman. Billy was 38 when he got his first big break with the feature film Billion Dollar Brain (1967). Since then, he has worked his way to the top of the industry with film credits such as Women in Love (1969), On Golden Pond (1981) and Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971). Notably Billy received an Academy Award for his cinematography on Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi (1982). In 2015 BAFTA paid tribute to his outstanding contribution to cinema. As a major influence in British cinema, it will be an honour to host Billy as he shares his wealth of knowledge in cinematography and the processes of working on film.

In conversation with Billy; we will also be welcoming Vanessa Whyte.

Vanessa was the Director of Photography on the 2016 BAFTA award-winning short film Operator and her drama projects have been screened worldwide, winning awards at Raindance, Vancouver, Berlin, LA Film Festival, Mofilm, IMDB and London Film Festival. She recently appeared on Woman’s Hour discussing women, cinematography and the new UK female cinematography collective illuminatrix.

Both cinematographers will be able to answer questions following their conversation.

This event is organised through the Creative Conversations initiative at the Department of Creative Professions and Digital Arts at the University of Greenwich and features as part of the Film and TV Production UoG programmes.

This is definitely an opportunity not to be missed. Interested academics, practitioners and members of the Creative Conversations network are welcome to attend.

Time & Date: 22nd February 2017, 5:00PM.
A drinks reception will follow the talk.

Venue: Lecture Theatre 004, University of Greenwich, Stockwell Street Building, 10 Stockwell Street, Greenwich SE10 9BD

Tickets for this event are free and can be booked on our Eventbrite page here.

creativity, Past Events, The Future of TV

Gub Neal on Producing & Storytelling

Well known for his work on Cracker, Band of Gold, Prime Suspect, Queer as Folk and current series The Fall, starring Gillian Anderson, Producer Gub Neal shares his in-depth knowledge of the creative process and the business of television drama past, present and future in these video clips from  his Creative Conversation with us in March 2016.

see all clips here

creativity, Past Events, The New Space of Publishing

Writing & Collaboration

The romantic myth of the artist as lone genius is an enduring one. Writers such as Boltanski & Chiapello and Brouillette have written persuasively about the way that this ideal has merged with the individualistic culture of capitalism to produce the contemporary model of the worker as autonomous creative individual, embracing the values of flexibility, innovation and self-sufficiency.

However, this myth actually erases much of the process and social context that characterise the act of writing. In fact, writers have always depended on the collaboration of others in a multitude of ways. They have depended morally, creatively and financially on family, friends and lovers to support them in their endeavours (famous examples include William & Dorothy Wordsworth; Percy Bysshe Shelley & Mary Shelley; Anais Nin, her husband Hugo Guiler & her lover Henry Miller). They have frequently developed their work as part of a collective movement of mutual inspiration (the Bloomsbury group, the Surrealists, the beat poets). Writers also regularly collaborate with agents and editors; screenwriters collaborate with producers, script editors, directors, actors, distributors, financers. And of course writers need readers. Dickens was acutely aware of his readers, writing for them in installments, and going on frequent public reading tours.

So it did not take digital culture to make writing an interactive and collaborative phenomenon. However, it has made such collaborative processes more visible and more scaleable. As Henry Jenkins points out, contemporary cultural practices, such as social media and fan fiction, have made online writing and reading feel more like a back and forth conversation than a one way process of production (by the writer) and reception (by the reader). On social network writing sites, such as Wattpad, writers actively engage readers in the development of their work. Many writers engage extensively with their reader community via social media and new business models, such as crowdfunding, also bring many active collaborators besides the writer into the writing process.

Our recent panel on The Writer as Catalyst & Collaborator featured five writers, whose work has explicitly involved the contribution of others: raising questions about how such processes might characterize writing in general. Four main themes emerged:

the changing role of the reader: readers are becoming more actively involved with texts and engaged with writers. Sarah Haynes, creator of internet collaborative fiction, The Button Jar discussed her particular interest in creating work that involves alternating between writing and reading. Visitors to the site can both read the stories of others and upload their own stories. Novelist Jean-Paul Flintoff crowd funded his book through the publisher Unbound. He worked with an improvisation group to develop the story and, later in the process, his funders provided feedback on drafts, which resulted in some important changes to the final work. These examples from new media storytelling and new funding models are part of a wider groundswell in the importance of reader communities. Across the publishing landscape, the relationship between readers and writers is becoming more interactive and collaborative.

 

 

the writer as conductor/editor: the role of the writer is also expanding. In her work, Haynes recasts the writer as editor/conductor and sees her role as being to devise a narrative frame for the interaction of other writers and readers that will facilitate ‘organized serendipity’. Olumide Popoola and Annie Holmes, who together researched and wrote the short story collection breach – which tells the story of the refugee crisis through six voices based on interviews with refugees in Calais – join Flintoff in rejecting the idea of the writer as ‘sole presiding genius of a work of art.’

Maya Chowdhry, poet and transmedia artist, sees the writer as ‘a sign-writer illuminating the way, or a compass showing that there are many directions’. She explained how pro-active she needed to be in going out to find her audience and facilitating ways for them to get involved in the location based narrative Tales from the Towpath. Flintoff says he has followed the example of the editor of a newspaper he used to work for, who saw his job as editor as being like ‘creating a party that people want to come to’.

As they develop more interactive, collaborative relationships with readers and other partners, writers need to develop a clear conception of what their role is within the collective. There are a range of metaphors to choose from: catalyst, compass, sign-writer, conductor, editor, party convenor… each project may require a different label, but a guiding metaphor can provide an important direction for a project.

ethics of collaboration: our panel’s experiences suggest that, although these are crucial, there may not be a one size fits all approach. The ethics will be determined to a certain extent by the nature of the project. Transparency about the aims of the project may be one guiding principle. Popoola and Holmes felt it important to make their aims absolutely clear to the people they spoke to at the refugee camp in Calais. They explained that they wanted to produce a fictional work, to provide a different perspective on the refugee crisis, and that they would not be telling the refugees’ individual stories in any direct way. Instead their intention was to draw on them more loosely as material. The writers found that most people at Calais were happy to talk, because they were bored and frustrated and keen to make connections with others. This human connection was as, if not more, important to them than getting their stories told to a wider audience. Nor did those refugees who had now made it to the UK have any great desire to be identified with the book or to be involved in its promotion. They were happy that it had been written and hoped that it would interest and move readers, but it was more important to them to get on with rebuilding their lives than to be identified as collaborators in the book.

Flintoff stated that, quite simply, ‘everyone needs to get something out of it.’ What ‘it’ is, however, may not always be fully defineable in advance. There are many different reasons why people might get involved in a project. Some may have a story to tell. Someone else might want to contribute in a small way to a big project they think is worthwhile. People might want to learn new skills, have new experiences, meet people. They might have a life goal they want to achieve or simply to take part in something fun. Furthermore the answer may develop and change as the project itself develops through the collaborative process. Therefore, although the writer as conductor needs to provide a clear framework for engagement, there also needs to be flexibility. As Chowdhry points out, rather than assign a role to collaborators in advance, it may be necessary to allow them to find it through their participation of the project.

A collaborative approach to writing has much in common with collective ventures such as performance, co-design and community activism and can draw on insights from these fields. The ethics of collaboration also depend on an acknowledgement of the process as productive of more than a work of art or a commercial product, as discussed below.

writing and reading as social practice: the informality, relationality and embeddedness of the writing practices discussed by our panel remind us that writing and reading are not aesthetic activities bracketed off from the rest of life and society. Popoola and Holmes said that they had made some lasting connections with the people they met in Calais and were still in touch. This was partly related to the book, but also to the friendship that had developed between them. The process of researching refugee experiences had thus led to two distinct outcomes: to new relationships and understandings of the world on the one hand and to a book of short stories on the other. They were equally important. Haynes and Flintoff also commented on the way that the structures within which they were writing led to and indeed were dependent on the development of human relationships.

Forms of writing and reading, which blur the boundaries between professional and social activities (social media, blogs, life writing, crowd funded works, interactive fiction, fan fiction) remind us, among other things, that professional writers draw on and develop personal relationships through their writing; non-professional writers can have huge public influence, and that both writing and reading can be variously and also simultaneously professional, political and leisure activities.

Watch all video clips from this and other creative conversations here

creativity, Past Events, Research

Feminism, Policy and Otherness, 20th July, University of Greenwich

The past week of British politics seems surreal in its ambiguity over the future. Reflecting not only the political but deeply embedded social challenges facing us in the 21st Century. As we look across Europe (and indeed the world) we see similar challenges for politicians and policy makers to tackle. Institutions we thought were immortal suddenly seem very vulnerable; both to collapse but perhaps more importantly to change, where fresh ideas and ways of seeing could find the space come to the forefront.

Woman also seem to be playing a key role in these political landscapes with newspapers like the Guardian running stories about May, Sturgeon, Merkel: women rising from the political ashes of men (http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/05/sturgeon-may-leadsom-women-to-the-rescue-amid-political-turmoil). However it seems that despite the gender of politicians there does not appear to be a significant shift in the way that policy is constructed or legislated. This will be the core focus of this conversation which will look at how feminist philosophy can push policy making into creating new ethical guidelines which draw from a more inclusive and plural range of ideas.

The Feminism, Policy and Otherness Creative Conversation will feature Nicole Dewandre, from the European Commission in conversation with Felicity Colman, Professor of Film and Media Arts at the Manchester School of Art. The event will be chaired by Ghislaine Boddington, Creative Director of Body>Data>Space and Reader at the University of Greenwich

We will aim to address the key questions:

What would policy-making look like if it implemented creative and feminist philosophy?

  • What are the prejudices in current policy-making?
  • What new ethical frameworks might evolve?
  • What are the potential barriers to these forms of creative intervention?

The conversation will also welcome questions and debate from the audience as we attempt to navigate the turbulent waters of deeply established convention. This promises to be an exciting meeting of minds unpicking the relationship between feminist philosophy and policy-making!

Register at Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/creative-conversations-feminism-policy-and-otherness-tickets-26323549445

Speakers Profiles:

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Felicity Colman is Professor of Film and Media Arts at the Manchester

School of Art, Manchester Metropolitan University.  Prof. Colman is Vice-Chair of the EU funded COST [European Cooperation in Science and Technology] Network Grant Action IS1307 on New Materialism: Networking European Scholarship on ‘How Matter Comes to Matter [2014-2018] http://www.cost.eu/domains_actions/isch/Actions/IS1307. She is the author of Film Theory: Creating a Cinematic Grammar (Columbia University Press, 2014), Deleuze and Cinema (Berg, 2011), and editor of Film, Theory and Philosophy: The Key Thinkers ((McGill-Queens University Press/ Routledge /Acumen, 2009), and co-editor of Global Arts & Local Knowledge (Lexington, 2015), and Sensorium: Aesthetics, Art, Life (Cambridge Scholars, 2007). She is Co-Editor [with Dr David Deamer and Prof. Joanna Hodge] of the A/V Journal of Practical and Creative Philosophy. Her current book projects are on “Digital Feminicity” and “Materialist Film”.

Web: http://www.art.mmu.ac.uk/profile/fcolman

Twitter: @felcolman

Nicole Dewandre

Nicole Dewandre is advisor for societal issues to the Director General of the Directorate General for Communications, Networks, Content and Technologies (DG CONNECT) at the European Commission. She studied applied physics engineering and economics at the University of Louvain, operations research at the University of California (Berkeley) and philosophy at the Free University of Brussels (ULB).

She published “Critique de la raison administrative, pour une Europe ironiste”, coll. L’ordre philosophique, Editions du Seuil, Paris, 2002. She entered the European Commission in 1983. She has been a member of the Central Advisory Group and the Forward Study Unit, dealing with strategic analysis of research and industrial policy for the President of the Commission (1986-1992). In 1993, she supported the Belgian Presidency of the European Union in the areas of industry, energy, and consumer policies. She then worked in “science and society” issues (women and science, research and civil society) from 1994 until 2006, before being in charge of the “sustainable development” unit that has been put in place in DG Research between 2007 and 2010. She is now working on the societal interface of the Digital Single Market.

Website: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/onlife-initiative

Ted Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcGywYSJlf0

Twitter @NicoleDewandre

photo 2

Ghislaine Boddington, Co-founder and Creative Director of body>data>space and Women Shift Digital, is a researcher, artist, dramaturg, curator and thought leader specialising in body responsive technologies. Ghislaine is recognised as an international pioneer advocating the use of the entire body as a digital interaction canvas for over 25 years. She has created live telepresence projects between thousands of participants/audiences across the world for arts, educational and creative industries usage, using her work to deeply examine the representation of our physical selves and our shifting identities in virtual environments. She has co-created and directed many art works exploring the hyper enhancement of our human senses, including “me and my shadow” for the National Theatre in 2012. She has been lead director of many international multi-partner projects, most recently the successful EU project “Robots and Avatars”.

In 2016 she co-curates Nesta’s FutureFest, is curator for the EUNIC series of exhibitions”The Games Europe Plays” and continues her research into virtual physical bodies through her Fellowship at Middlesex University and Readership at CPDA University of Greenwich.

Website: http://www.bodydataspace.net

Twitter @GBoddington